


The Fine Line Between Desire and Fear

by matchstick_dolly



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Deckerstar - Freeform, Double Date, Established Relationship, F/M, Ghosts, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Humor, Identity Reveal, Lucifer POV, Michaella, Post-Season/Series 05, Puns & Word Play, Sexual Content, a little horror as a treat, the fourteen-billion-year-old virgin, written before 5B aired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27324919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchstick_dolly/pseuds/matchstick_dolly
Summary: After Lucifer discovers Chloe's penchant for horns, he wants nothing more than to fulfill her pointed desire. But first he must suffer a double not-date with Miss Lopez and Michael at haunted Westing Manor, a sprawling Victorian mansion where all his twin brother's fears may be realized.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Ella Lopez/Michael
Comments: 53
Kudos: 305
Collections: TDN's Incredible Exchange 2020





	1. Welcome to Westing Manor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tellemonstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tellemonstar/gifts).



> Written for tellemonstar (on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tellemonstar) and [Tumblr](https://tellemonstar.tumblr.com/)). I used her prompt of "ridiculous costumes."
> 
> Thank you to [elleflies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elleflies) for all the cheerleading. I've needed it so much lately.

Halloween had absolute bugger-all to do with Dad, which made it one of the better human traditions. Witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and other sundry children of the night were Lucifer's domain. Oh, sure, there were appallingly inaccurate portrayals of his person, but otherwise, what wasn't there to love? The Devil enjoyed sweets, mischief, and a good fancy dress party as much as the next slutty kitten. It didn't hurt that All Hallows' Eve often found him up to his eyeballs in naughty nurses, promiscuous princesses, and depraved Donald Ducks, but this year there was only one raunchy rozzer he intended to get over, under, or behind (or afore—Detective's choice). 

But first he would have to suffer a jaunt through a haunted house. At least he was enjoying his "me" costume. Dark crimson suit and ridiculous headband in place, he had decided to enjoy the night as the Devil himself. Typically, he liked going the extra mile for fancy dress, but not quite as much as he enjoyed teasing people with the truth. 

He arrived at the Detective's early in the evening, parked in front of her complex, and honked the chorus to "Highway to Hell" on the Corvette's horn. He let up on it only when she came jogging out the front gate. A giant grin broke across his face at the large, brown, plumed hat tilted atop her head. A white peasant top accentuated her breasts, while tight, khaki breeches clung to her curves, only to be swallowed up by brown tall boots that made her long legs look even fabulously longer. An elegantly curved cutlass swung at her side from her sword belt.

"Well, blow me _down_!" he laughed, reaching across the console to shove open the passenger door. "Yer shivering me timber, wench."

The Detective snickered as she fell into the passenger seat. "That's _Captain_ to knaves like you," she teased, while tugging at her seat belt. 

"I like to think of myself as more of a coxswain, really." 

Seat belt secured, she turned and looked at him—finally, truly looked at him—and her mouth fell open as her eyes went wide. "You're—"

"The Devil?" Lucifer chuckled, pleased with himself, until her stunned expression didn't abate. He craned his neck back and frowned. "Whatever's wrong? Should I have worn something else?" Reaching up, he touched one of the sparkly red horns poking up from his head. 

"Don't," she breathed, hand darting out to grab his wrist. "I like them." She cleared her throat. "They, you know, suit you."

"But I don't have—" He stopped abruptly and looked at her more closely, at the way her pupils had blown wide, and— "Well, I'll be damned." 

"What?"

This _whole_ bloody time. All the comments, all the so-called jokes, the mask she'd given him on that fateful night of devilish dysphoria. Oh, naughty, _naughty_ detective. 

"You _like_ -like these, don't you!" he crowed. 

A rose blush flooded her cheeks, answering the question for her as she scoffed and withdrew her hand as if she'd been burned. She stared straight ahead. "I said I did, didn't I?"

"Oh, no, no, no." He leaned closer. "You're not going to downplay this dirty little fantasy of yours. Look at me."

After a deep roll of her eyes, she turned back to him, her cheeks still pink beneath her plumed hat. Really, he didn't need his mojo to read her, and wasn't that thrilling?

He schooled his face for all he was worth and asked the penultimate question: "Do I make you horny, Captain?"

"Oh my— _Seriously_?" Tugging on her shirt, she straightened once more. "Can you just drive already?"

"It's okay if you want to roger me jolly with these on. I'm not offended." If anything, he was delighted.

"We're going to be late."

"We're not leaving until you parley with me."

"I could just drive there myself."

" _Come on_ ," he wheedled, gently poking her side so she was forced to hold back a giggle. "Admit it. You want me, the Devil, _with_ horns." If only self-actualization were a matter of conscious desire, he'd bloody well plaster some on his noggin now. As it was, she'd have to be satisfied with headbands and the horn in his trousers.

The Detective picked at a thread on her shirt. "Okay, fine," she groaned. "Maybe I've had...a few dreams, or whatever, over the years." 

"Over the _years_ ," he repeated, genuinely upset. "Why haven't you said anything before now?"

"I didn't want you to feel like I want you to be something you're not."

"I know it's not like that," he said gently, heart squeezing in his chest because he _did_ know. "You're just a pervert, darling."

Humor restored, a horribly loud snort erupted from her nose. She held up a finger in warning. "Look, I don't even know that I want this in reality. I told you I'm not into roleplay."

Lucifer grinned and licked his teeth. Leaning his arm against the back of her seat, he reached up and lifted her hat so he could duck under its brim. "We'll see what you're into," he said against her lips, "when you ride the Devil's face later."

* * *

Miss Lopez had been begging them to go to Westing Manor for years. She was finally getting her wish. At the worst possible time, really. Of course, the only reason Lucifer was deigning to attend a haunted house at all was because the Detective had "accidentally" agreed to it for him. Not showing up after that would be tantamount to lying, and the Devil did not lie.

The mansion was an hour north of Los Angeles. It was just far enough away from the city that his understanding of California stopped looking like a beachy postcard filled with beautiful people and started looking like rural Middle America, a region Lucifer tried only to suffer in the depths of Hell, if he could help it. But he had to give it to the attraction's organizers, places like these _were_ perfect for evoking despair, and he should know. 

Not that his mind was especially on the road or the destination. It was on the lass beside him. The thing about learning a lover's kink was that it was a bit like an X-rated earworm: It possessed Lucifer's brain until he fulfilled the desire. _Chloe Decker was into horns_. On _him_. Because she was into the Devil, who he happened to be. There were simply so many possibilities to—

"Don't miss the turnoff," the detective said, interrupting his thoughts. She pointed to a narrow dirt road, where the fronds of several dramatic pepper trees obscured the turn and the faded, wooden sign for Westing Farms. "Spooky," she said, and flashed a grin. 

The Corvette's tires kicked up plumes of dust as the road zigged and zagged on an incline that was wedged between hills. Really, he had _just_ had the blasted car washed.

"I didn't take you for the haunted house sort, Detective."

She shrugged. "I like the rush of adrenaline."

"Is that what the horn fetish is about?"

He felt more than saw her eyes roll. "I wouldn't call it a _fetish_."

"Of course not." 

"Anyway, you're still thinking about that?"

"You're _not_?" he countered, pointing to his headband.

"I mean..."

"Exactly. So of course I'm still bloody thinking about it." He sat up straighter as an idea came to him. "Say, what if we find a room in this mansion and—"

"Absolutely not."

"I'll pay off whomever's there. We'll clear the house, lay out my suit jacket."

"No."

Lucifer sighed a moment before letting out a short, low whistle as they rounded a curve that opened onto a plateau lit by a sole lamppost with a dim light. There, the three-story Westing Manor sprawled, nearly castle-like in its size. It was unexpectedly Victorian, eerily lamplit, and delightfully rundown and creepy in a there-are-bodies-buried-in-the-backyard sort of way. Gabled roofs and towers rose like witches' hats in the night, capping old paint that must have once been navy, but was now a mere baby blue, and a peeling one, at that. 

"Wow." The Detective leaned forward to get a better view. "How did Ella even find out about this? There are like ten people here."

"Very clandestine," Lucifer agreed. "Also very _Children of the Corn_." Turning his head, he looked out at rows upon rows of green stalks which stood proudly at the clearing's perimeter. He frowned in thought. "D'you know, I never did figure how Stephen King heard about what happened in Nebraska."

The feather in the Detective's hat swung leftward as she turned to him. "You're joking, right?"

"Ah!" He lifted a hand and waved. "There's Miss Lopez now."

Waiting by the silver Camaro he had gifted her, Miss Lopez jumped up and down at the sight of them, the striped tail of her tiger onesie bobbing behind her. As Lucifer parked, a second figure rose from her vehicle, crooked-shouldered, berobed in black, and hidden by a beaked plague doctor's mask.

The Detective groaned. "Is that Michael?"

"Bloody hell, she didn't say she was bringing _him_."

"No. She didn't." 

The contempt the Detective felt for his brother could rival Lucifer's own, and rightfully so. Machiavellian machinations, impersonations, and kidnappings weren't the kinds of things one got over in a night, or perhaps ever, but then that was the convoluted world of immortals, wasn't it? And Dad had commanded them, the Detective included, to sort out their divine bollocks, and so here they were. What none of them had foreseen was Miss Lopez actually bloody _liking_ the bastard once she properly met him.

"I'm _sooo_ glad we're finally doing this!" Miss Lopez cheered as they climbed out of the Corvette and walked closer. "Chloe, oh my gosh, _girl_ , you could get all the booty."

"It's true," Lucifer agreed. 

"And Lucifer—" Miss Lopez laughed and scrunched her cat-nosed face. "Man, you _never_ break character, big guy."

"Not a character, Miss Lopez."

"Right, right." She flashed a smile at the beaked doctor as he came to stand beside her.

"Lucifer," Michael said, his distaste evident even behind the mask. "Chloe."

The Detective pretended not to have heard him as she crossed her arms over her chest and tapped a leather-booted foot against the dry earth. "You didn't tell us this was a double date, Ella."

"Not a date!" she said in a rush, glancing up at Michael, whose beak had turned toward her. "Definitely not a date. Michael and I are just pals."

 _Pals_ , sure. 

Michael said nothing.

Before Lucifer could make a witty reply, the door to Westing Manor was thrown wide, making a nearby Spider-Man hop in surprise. Out of the mansion's dark interior marched a tall, slender man with slicked-back black hair that shined above his vintage, plum-colored tailcoat and matched the midnight trousers which encased his pencil-thin legs. Standing between ornate balusters that were in need of a fresh coat of paint, the well-dressed stranger hammered the gold tip of his cane against the portico's hardwood—once, twice, thrice.

"Welcome to Westing Manor!"

Miss Lopez squealed and grabbed Michael's arm through his robes. His beak barely missed butting into her tiger-eared head. Digging into a onesie pocket, she produced several folded papers. "I am _so_ ready, you guys. I've got our tickets here. Oh, yeah, and I just signed the waivers for all of us ahead of time."

The Detective frowned. "Waivers? What waivers?" 

"My name is Stanley Walsh," said the man with the cane. He spoke with the cadence of one trained for theater. "I'm the custodian of this fine home. Built in 1898 by the late architect Robert F. Garrison, Westing Manor was a gift to his sickly wife, Sarah, who never made it to California." Stanley held up a hand to his eyes and looked left and right at their shadowed figures. "Well, why are you all standing so far away? _Come closer_."

The Detective grinned at Lucifer beneath her hat and grabbed his hand. With Miss Lopez and Michael, they joined the other humans. Most were costumed, but a few were not and instead wore bored expressions that suggested they had low expectations, as if there were nothing on Earth which could frighten them. All told, it was quite a different crowd from the one Lucifer was most familiar. Not a single latex-laden nurse in sight.

Stanley spent a long moment looking into each of their faces. "During her journey to join her husband, Sarah Westing became increasingly ill until one night her maid found her coughing up blood." A dramatic pause. "She was dead within hours." He tilted his head and raised perfectly sculpted brows, and Lucifer found himself grinning at the practiced showmanship. In another life that he had no desire to trade for this one, he'd have unbuttoned all of Stanley's buttons. "Following his wife's death, Robert became a recluse in this very home, turning away from his beloved architecture in favor of a life as a Californian farmer. It wasn't a good fit. Even during the time, he was known for his brutally unfair labor practices, which an intrepid activist in our fledgling state tried, and failed, to bring into line.

"When Robert's diary was found tucked beneath his mattress, historians believed they would find evidence of a broken, grieving man." Stanley looked back at the mansion with fondness. "Instead, two stories are told in Robert's journal: one of a man given to violent outbursts that he was always regretting, and one of a sickly wife he did not love. A wife who may have not made it west in life, but had certainly found her way here in death."

"Oh, what poppycock," Lucifer griped, reaching for his flask. 

" _Shh_ ," the Detective and Miss Lopez shushed.

"Was Sarah truly sick?" Stanley queried. "Or had angry Robert, resentful of a marriage forced upon him by his own controlling father, directed Sarah's servant to feed her poison? Is Westing Farms and its manor one elaborate coverup of a murder that later backfired?" 

Lucifer grimaced. A man could have a controlling father. Didn't leave him any excuses to murder. 

Stanley's voice dropped to a softer tone. "In his diaries, Robert says Sarah is always with him. She is in the very walls of Westing Manor. He walks into rooms and finds her, waiting for him. Sometimes she weeps, he writes, and sometimes she is angry. Every night, she would come to him."

"Ooh, doesn't sound like the worst relationship, after all."

The Detective rolled her eyes, but wrapped an arm around his waist, nevertheless. Feeling smug, he tucked her closer and hooked a thumb into her sword belt.

"Robert would wake to find Sarah standing at the end of his bed. Sometimes she would simply watch him, others..." Stanley spread his arms, his cane angling as he shrugged suggestively. "In the morning, he would find scratches at his throat and chest, and soon every food he ate plagued his constitution—as it had once plagued Sarah's. His doctors would eventually prescribe him laudanum to help him sleep."

Lucifer snickered. "Those were the days."

"Everyone has a fear of sleep paralysis after they experience it," Michael pointed out, like some annoying angelic egghead, his voice muffled by faux leather and cloth. "Even if they don't call it sleep paralysis."

"It's true," Lucifer agreed begrudgingly. "Awful bit of trolling on Dad's part."

" _Shh_."

"We don't know what became of Robert Garrison. One day, his field hands visited for their meager weekly pay, only to find he had abandoned Westing Manor. Or so the tale goes. All of Robert's luggage, all of his belongings, remained, and he _never_ returned. Many have owned Westing Manor since, and there have been numerous reports of strange occurrences—cabinets and doors opening on their own, rooms suddenly growing hot or cold, and sometimes"—Stanley leaned forward, putting his weight on the head of his cane—"sightings of Sarah herself, drifting through the halls restlessly."

"Is this...based on a true story?" the Detective whispered to Miss Lopez.

She shook her head. "The description for this place claimed it was a mix of classic haunted house, experimental theater, and real-life history. But, _spoiler_ ," she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, "I saw a review that said actors are inside." She shrugged. "Also saw some reviews that said Sarah's inside." She suddenly stuffed a hand deep into the front of her onesie, and Lucifer glared at the way Michael's beak dipped. She unearthed a golden crucifix—one much larger than her standard miniature cross and much more Jesus-nailed-to-it—and showed it to them. "Personally, ghosts and me? We get on great."

"Miss Lopez, ghosts aren't real."

"Uhhh, I think they are." She returned her crucifix to the inside of her onesie. "Anyways, if this is, like, some _Poltergeist_ 'Get thee behind me, Satan' shiz"—Lucifer grimaced with the Detective—"I am _pre-pared_. I've even got holy water in my back pocket."

"That was _holy water_?" Michael blurted.

Miss Lopez spun toward him, whacking Lucifer with her tiger tail. "Dude, did you drink my holy water?"

"I was _thirsty_ ," he said, mask and robes raising as he lifted his chin and spread his arms. "There was water."

The Detective snorted.

"When you enter," Stanley said, drawing his eerie tale to a close, "remember to keep an open spirit and be kind to the lady of the manor. The field hands are watching."

After a brief round of applause and the blunt placement of a tip jar on the porch railing, Stanley stood beside the door and waved everyone forward. Tickets in hand, the humans organized themselves into something approximating single file, and the night began. 

The Detective shuddered beneath Lucifer's arm. "Let's... Can we go last?"

"Yeah, I _definitely_ wanna go last," Miss Lopez agreed.

Lucifer's brow furrowed. "How can either of you be afraid? You ladies deal with death _every_ day." 

"Yeah. _Deeead_ people," Miss Lopez said. "Like, even after everything, Big Guy and I are tight and all, but your girl Ella can't do supernatural stuff _all the time_." 

Michael's bum shoulder straightened as her words struck a disquieting chord.

Really, she had _no_ idea. Lucifer turned to the Detective as his brother and Miss Lopez moved forward with the line. "And _you_ , Captain... Well." He smiled. "You _know_. What could be more terrifying than that?" 

"I'm not afraid," she said, moving closer to touch his waist.

A look passed between them that was at once a soft, gentle acknowledgement of all they had been through, and at once _not_ , something else entirely, something carnal Lucifer had never known existed before the Detective. It was the kind of passion that rose only with time, when the line between oneself and another had begun to blur pleasurably, like blended watercolors.

And she was staring at the horns. He was never getting rid of them. He'd wear them at the damn precinct.

"You guys coming?" Miss Lopez called at the foot of the porch's steps.

The spell broke, and the Detective shared a smirk with Lucifer before they joined the others. While Miss Lopez was handing over their tickets, Lucifer noted how the mansion was well and truly alive with sound now, from the stomping of feet, to shouts and laughter. And then the first blood-curdling scream tore through the aged wood. Miss Lopez laughed in delight while Michael took a step back.

Of course he was a chicken.

"Gosh, it's been a while since I've heard a scream like that," Lucifer said, while distractedly stuffing several hundreds into Stanley's jar. It was the least he could do since he could no longer stuff men like Stanley with himself.

The Detective and Miss Lopez crossed the threshold, while Michael hung back a moment before making to follow. Perfect, Lucifer thought, and stamped an Oxford onto the tail of his brother's robes. Michael grunted in protest as Lucifer reached out and snatched the plague doctor's mask off his head, _Scooby Doo_ -revealing his scowling, scarred face. _Dad_ , if the sight of that scar didn't bring Lucifer a spiteful jolt of joy every time.

" _What_?" Michael snapped.

"You haven't told her."

"No, _Sam_ , I haven't. Sue me."

Another scream echoed through the house, followed by what Lucifer recognized as Miss Lopez's uncertain giggle. He looked to the side. Stanley stood a few feet away, lighting a cigarette. "My man Stan, would you be a dear and give my lecherous brother and me a moment?"

Stanley's lighter flicked bright into the night. Burning cigarette now hanging from his lips, he tucked his tip jar under one arm and his cane beneath the other. "Honey," he started, his accent suddenly distinctly southern, "you just paid my rent. You can have the house for all I care." At that, he jogged down the steps and made a beeline for a depressingly beat-up Kia.

Turning back to Michael, Lucifer shook the plague doctor mask in his hand. "You and I made a deal when you began cozying up to Miss Lopez, brother. I would stay out of it provided you told her the truth. She _deserves_ to know."

Michael rolled his eyes and snatched his mask back. "You realize you're the world's biggest hypocrite, right? It took you, what, three years?"

"Yes, but I wasn't sleeping with the Detective."

Glancing nervously into the mansion, Michael bit out, "And I'm not sleeping with Ella."

Clearly. "And hopefully it stays that way." She'd had quite enough failures and cretins in her life. The last thing she needed was a two-pump chump to top it all. He waved a hand, frustrated to be forced to spell it out. "Can't you just channel that _frustrated_ energy into, well, other channels?" His mouth twisted. "Don't answer that. I don't want to know." 

"I'm not you."

"Yes, as we've bloody established."

"Bite me."

Lucifer narrowed his eyes. "If you don't tell Miss Lopez soon, the Detective _will_. I assure you that you don't want the right to reveal the truth to be stolen from you." Spotting a piece of annoyingly white lint on Michael's shoulder, Lucifer picked at the black cloth before dusting it. Suddenly realizing what he was doing, he quickly withdrew his hand and wiped his fingers on the dark red lapel of his of suit jacket. 

Michael shuddered with him. "Chloe wants to tell her?" 

"Mm- _hmm_."

His brother's typical haughty indifference slipped, revealing the slightest bit of panic. Yes, Lucifer thought, two can play the fear game. Fear was _easy_ , the basest of all emotions, _the lizard brain_. And as much as he despised his twin, he knew how far Michael was out of his element. After all, Lucifer wasn't dumb when it came to those sneaky little feelings one could develop for a human. Well. Not any more, at least.

"Tell her," he insisted once more. "And soon." 

Straightening the sparkly horns atop his head, Lucifer gave Michael and his pestilent getup one last look of disdain before stepping into Westing Manor. 


	2. Clearer in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [MoanDiary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoanDiary/pseuds/MoanDiary) for her eyes. Also, sorry for the extreme delay, everyone, and especially [tellemonstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tellemonstar)! My sense of humor got a little too morbid because of the U.S. election. I like guillotine jokes as much as the next jaded millennial, but they just didn't fit here.

The parlor inside Westing Manor was lit dimly by gas lamps. Yellow light flickered from within the dusty, glass shades, casting strange, dancing shapes on a flat-cushioned settee, pockmarked crown molding, and half-finished wallpaper jobs that featured hideous, swirling patterns. The old mansion was full of noise—whispers and voices, the occasional nervous burst of laughter from those who had already ventured ahead, and, as a very nice touch indeed, a hint of a music box playing slightly discordant nineteenth-century waltzes.

Hardwood flooring creaked first beneath Lucifer's shoes and then Michael's as they left the parlor and entered the first room to their right. The Detective and Miss Lopez looked up from where they leaned over an antique writing desk.

"Ahoy, Captain."

"There you are." She smiled. "We were wondering if you two had wimped out."

"Well, certainly _I_ wouldn't," Lucifer said with a cutting smirk toward his brother.

"What's in here?" Michael asked in his mask-muffled voice.

"Nothing _that_ creepy," Ella sighed in disappointment, swinging her tiger tail in hand. "Just some fetuses in a jar." A man shouted somewhere else in the house. "I read the coolest stuff is upstairs."

"They left out records," said the Detective, scratching beneath her plumed hat. "There're a bunch of letters Sarah sent to Robert."

So much for being an adrenaline junkie. "Leave it to you to find paperwork at a haunted—"

"I'd like to see those letters," Michael interrupted, brushing past him.

"Oh, of course _you_ would be into the story."

"I don't know," Chloe said. "I think it's cool you can touch everything and that they put in this much attention to detail." She looked at Michael warily as he began shuffling through a wooden box. "You'll need your phone's flashlight. It's so dark in here."

"I don't have a phone."

Miss Lopez shook her head. "Dude, you are so weird sometimes."

Michael shrugged a shoulder. "May I borrow yours?"

Lucifer gave him a dirty look. "Get your own, you prat."

"Guys," Miss Lopez whispered, "the pictures."

She pointed to three long and narrow portraits which hung crookedly on the office's yellow wall: one suited and thick-chested man in the middle, sandwiched by two stern-faced women from an unfortunate time when humans looked twenty going on fifty. Quite probably due to temperance sucking all the joy out of their lives.

"What about them?" Lucifer asked.

"Maybe that's Robert and Sarah," Chloe suggested. Her brow furrowed as she thought. "Ooh, and Sarah's maid?"

"I don't know who they are," Miss Lopez replied. "I'm just interested in what they _do_." She took a step sideways, closer to Michael.

The Detective gasped in delight as the portrait's three sets of eyes darted to the left. "The eyes follow us!"

They took turns being followed, making increasingly crass gestures and jokes about all the paintings might have seen in their time. Miss Lopez was the first to notice Michael was not joining in from where he leaned against the writing desk, looking like an exhausted bad omen.

"Aww, Mikey, this room isn't that disturbing, is it?"

Lucifer perked up. "Yes, _Mikey_ ," he said, pouting his lips, "ah you afwaid?"

The plague doctor's beak pointed toward him, and though the dim light and mask made it nearly impossible to see Michael's eyes, Lucifer was certain his teasing had struck a nerve. Who knew what fears his brother did or didn't have, but there was no denying he was _green_. No matter how much he had orchestrated in Lucifer's life, Michael had spent the majority of his time coddled by the Silver City. He didn't know the real world. Not to mention how disturbing it could be to feel out of control of your own gift. Michael massaged and used fears. He didn't subject himself to them, not even silly, fake ones constructed by humans. Nightmares were what Lucifer, not Michael, had lived with for millennia.

They entered a large, high-ceilinged library next and looked around curiously when nothing stood out as abnormal. Shelves lined the walls, from floor to ceiling, the lamplight far too weak to reach their full heights.

The Detective squinted in the darkness at the books. "Maybe there's a secret door?" she suggested.

They tugged on books experimentally, dividing into groups at either end of the expansive room. Michael and Miss Lopez's voices carried softly, if indistinctly, and Lucifer glanced back, disturbed, when his brother laughed.

Michael did not laugh. Michael had no bloody sense of humor at all.

Shuddering, Lucifer hunted for a palate cleanser. He beamed as he pulled free an old, green-backed tome titled _Studies in Female Hysteria_. Waggling his brows, he held it up for the Detective to see. "Darling, I've terrible news about your health."

Glancing at the title, her mouth twitched as she tugged on another book. "And you have the cure, I'm guessing."

"Oh, yes," he purred, inching fingers along the shelf until they met and entwined with hers. "I've veritable horns of plenty at your service, Captain."

A floorboard creaked near the library's entrance. They looked back in surprise at the same time Miss Lopez dropped the book she was holding. The hardback fell to the wood with a loud clap which echoed.

And suddenly the room was alive. Chirruping, screeching bats drowned out all other sound as black-and-brown bodies darted from the ceiling.

Squealing with laughter, the Detective dove, dragging Lucifer with her beneath a nearby table. They grinned at each other under the shelter as the mayhem continued, and small bodies _plunked_ against the tabletop.

Lucifer leaned forward to catch a glimpse of Miss Lopez and his brother. He wheezed with laughter at the sight of the robed plague doctor hopping and twisting and spinning in place; and above the screeching din, he thought he could hear Michael's panicked cries. At his side, Miss Lopez wielded a thin book like a weapon, knocking chiropteran bodies left and right.

"They're not real!" she yelled over the noise at the same time Lucifer plucked a felt bat from the floor. "Michael, they're not real!"

Her voice was loud in the library as the shrieking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. She let the book drop to a table.

" _Phew_ ," Miss Lopez breathed, though not without a pleased grin. "Were those things animatronic?"

Lucifer slithered from beneath the table and offered a hand to the Detective as he stood. "Try felted projectile," he said, lifting the sewn body this way and that in the poor lighting. "Clever little things. They must have shot them at us from somewhere in the ceiling." He peered up into the darkness.

"Wow, my heart is beating so fast." Miss Lopez laughed before sobering and studying Michael as best one could study a ridiculously costumed man. "Do you have a fear of bats?"

Michael brushed at his robes stiffly. " _No_ ," he snapped petulantly, "I don't have a fear of bats."

"Oookay, dude," Miss Lopez hummed. "Whatever you say."

Lucifer shared a look with the Detective. If only his brother would admit to his shameful, crippling anxieties, perhaps they could be out of here sooner. The Detective had a tragic tendency to tire at midnight.

A scream sounded from upstairs. " _I saw Sarah_!" a woman cried.

"Thank Dad there's something more riveting to come," Lucifer murmured as the mansion's second story erupted with hurried footsteps.

The Detective craned her neck as she listened. "That's definitely more people than we saw outside."

"This mansion is huge-mongous," Miss Lopez said. "No telling how many actors are hiding in here. I think it's supposed to take two hours to get through it? You know, if you stop and look at stuff." She glanced at Michael sidelong with sympathy. "But we can, uh, just rush through the first floor and get to the good stuff, I guess."

They followed what seemed to be the natural flow of the sprawling manor, encountering apparitions in mirrors, a leisure room that was several degrees colder than it should have been, and a kitchen filled with rotting food that made Michael gag behind his beak.

"Not exactly Heaven's roses, is it, brother?" Lucifer lifted an overripe, maggot-ridden apple by its stem and studied it before dropping it into a sink filled with blood. The viscous fluid splattered up and out of the basin as the apple made impact. "They do enjoy a bit of authenticity."

Michael made an aborted retching sound.

"Whoa, dude." Miss Lopez patted his back.

He shrugged away from her touch, and Lucifer felt a trace of empathy he rather wished he wouldn't. They watched Michael lurch from the kitchen.

"I guess they do make it seem pretty real," Miss Lopez said distantly, still staring at the door as she hugged her tiger tail to her middle. She shook herself, reviving her generally bubbly demeanor. "They go all out. Only host this one night a year, for a single event."

"How can they afford this kind of setup for one night?" the Detective wondered, jumping a little when she found a human head in a cabinet. She poked at it tentatively and shivered. "Unless..." She looked at Lucifer over her shoulder, a sparkle lighting her eyes. "Lucifer, are _you_ bankrolling this place?"

"What? N—" Frowning, he stopped short of denial as he considered his very long history of favors. He was far from the only man of wealth and taste handing out business loans for vague artistic endeavors, and this _would_ be the sort of avant-garde rubbish his money would buy him. "I don't believe so," he decided, but would check later to confirm.

Leaving behind the kitchen's swarming gnats and flies, they rejoined his degenerate brother and navigated to the end of the hallway, where stairs led to the second story. Each step groaned beneath their feet. 

Upon reaching the top, two dirty, barefoot men in torn shirts and breeches scurried from one room to another. Michael stumbled back in surprise, nearly falling down the stairs and, in Lucifer's opinion, depriving them of comedy when he didn't.

"Now we're getting somewhere," Lucifer chuckled, walking forward with the Detective by his side. "Feeling scared yet, Captain?"

"Nope. I don't have many fears." She looped her arm with his, and he caught the sly glance she gave the horns on his head. "Anyway, the Devil wouldn't let anything happen to me."

Pride put a snap in his step as he grinned.

The broken tunes from the music box were louder now and warbled as though the mansion were a figment of Hell. The second story was a place of movement with admittedly cracking good production value. Farm hands appeared ahead or in the periphery, there and gone, sometimes through some unseen passageway, or through a door that, once opened, led nowhere at all. Women in white wept in rocking chairs, whilst women in black hissed from corners, their faces bloated and blue.

Above the door to a suite which contained a hideous pink-canopied bed and peeling floral wallpaper, a message was written in blood—bovine, to be exact. _I love you, Robert. Do you love me?_

"Hell hath no fury," Lucifer said with a smile.

"I am _not_ going in there," Michael griped, folding robed arms over his chest.

"Really?" The Detective looked back at him scathingly. "What is it you truly fear, Michael?" she parroted, and Lucifer beamed.

Michael's beak turned toward her. "Well, Chloe Decker," he began, tone snide, "it's certainly not a fear of the inevitability of change and how it might leave me alone again." He laced his fingers before him. "So at least I have _that_ going for me."

"Oh, bugger o—"

"That's not gonna work this time," the Detective said bluntly. 

" _Wow_... Uh..." Miss Lopez looked between them in confusion. "Can we chill? It's just a haunted house, you guys."

"No problem here." The Detective gave Michael a tight-lipped smile before stepping into the bedroom.

Lucifer followed, his stomach performing a pleased somersault as he placed a hand on her back. She glanced at him, her eyes and smile soft. It made it easy to ignore the quiet bickering between Miss Lopez and his brother as she tried to convince him to cross the threshold. Coward.

The Detective explored the bedroom with her typical fearless gusto. She held her breath and yanked open a closet door, which revealed nothing but dusty clothes. Miss Lopez entered a moment later, Michael reluctantly trailing behind. Lucifer bared his teeth in a vicious grin.

One wall of the bedroom was dedicated to shelves filled with porcelain dolls, their clothes yellowed by time, their fragile faces cracked. Very Hell loop, especially the little girl doll in the center; the hole in her hollow head gave her a rictal smile. While the Detective and Miss Lopez dared to pick up the dolls and play with the environment, Michael settled rigidly on the edge of the canopied bed. Leaning against a wall and crossing his ankles, Lucifer held back a smirk as he studied his brother. He didn't need Michael's gift or to see his brother's face to know he was barely holding it together.

If Lucifer was going to be forced to bear his twin's presence, he would never, ever let Michael live this night down. The king of fear himself filling his trousers over a little haunted house was perhaps the next best thing to the divine retribution he'd deserved.

Then something glorious happened. A blackened hand darted from beneath the bed and latched onto Michael's ankle. His brother leapt and screamed, the Detective screamed, Miss Lopez screamed, and Lucifer bent in half with laughter at the chorus of sopranos. Miss Lopez and the Detective quieted first and watched with Lucifer as Michael yelled and stamped to dislodge the hand. Once freed, his frightened shrieks subsided, and his beak turned left and right, pausing on each of them in turn. With an irritated snort, he strode from the room, his lame shoulder knocking into Lucifer's as he passed.

"Jeez," Miss Lopez laughed, one hand on her chest.

The Detective nodded, her eyes still fixed on the pink bed as she took a step back. "That got me good."

Snickering, Lucifer neared the bed. The hand darted out once again and grabbed his ankle as he bent, took hold of the mahogany frame's edge with one hand, and raised it high.

Miss Lopez whistled. "Whoa. Lucifer lifts, huh?"

On the floor beneath the bed, a young Japanese woman dressed in head-to-toe black spandex peered up at Lucifer with big eyes. She grinned sheepishly. He grinned back. "This is for a job _very_ well done," he commended, and handed her two hundred dollars before settling the frame back over her.

"Lucifer," the Detective laughed.

He enjoyed the mischief in her expression. " _Captain_."

Outside the bedroom, Michael was nowhere to be seen. As the only person who missed him, Miss Lopez called his name, her voice soft above the unharmonious music and the distant shouts of the other parties navigating the mansion.

"Do you think he's okay?" she asked, as they chose to bypass a room with a blank-staring field hand. He slammed down the points of his rake as they moved on.

"What Michael is suffering from, Miss Lopez, is a taste of his own bitter medicine. It's no one's fault but his own that he can't swallow it."

They followed the hallway to its end, where a bronze statue of a bucking horse loomed, as big as a man, with teeth bared and sculpted muscles licked by the dancing light of gas lamps. Turning the corner, they entered a spacious, rounded sitting area clearly central to the second story. Bloody hell, how much was left? It was a quarter to ten, and he had a ship to anchor in a pirate's cove.

Situated beneath one of the manor's peaked towers, the sitting area's ceiling rose high into pitch black darkness, whilst in the dark edges of the room, a grandfather clock ticked, its mechanical body unseen. Dusty, torn furniture stood around a barren fireplace. Above its mantel, two lamps glowed on either side of a giant stag's head. The animal stared sightlessly, its fur worn in mangy patches.

They wandered to the center of the room, away from the shadows. The Detective looked to and fro. More rooms and several halls branched off from the rounded area, leaving a multitude of directional possibilities.

"Where to now?" she asked.

"I think we need to find Michael," said Miss Lopez. "Maybe we should split up? I'm not too afraid to go boldly into the unknown." 

"Usually not a good idea for people to split up in horror movies," the Detective laughed.

"I assure you my brother is perfectly fine," Lucifer sighed in irritation. "If not, he'll pop off like the chicken he is. He might have already, in fact." That was Michael for you. Sneaky, yes, but sniveling, too; the first to fly away.

Miss Lopez would hear none of it. "I'm going that way." She pointed to one of the halls. "You guys can go there." She pointed to another. "I think he's probably looking for a way out, not going into rooms."

At that, she took off in the direction of the other hallway, striped tail swaying behind her. The detective bit her lip as she watched Miss Lopez leave.

"Are we sure this is a good idea?"

Lucifer chuckled. "They'll be fine. None of this is real, Captain."

She glanced at him sheepishly beneath her plumed hat. "I know, but you have to admit it's getting pretty creepy."

Was it? It seemed no better or worse to him than before, really, but his barometer for such things was, well, _skewed_ , to say the least. When she gave a small shudder, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and guided her into the new hallway at a leisurely pace.

"Are you tired?" he asked, thumb sweeping beneath the edge of her sleeve.

She stared at the shadowed ceiling as they moved forward. "Lucifer, that is the last thing on my mind right now."

"I was simply _asking_."

"Yeah, well, you—"

A door slammed shut, and the dissonant music quieted abruptly.

" _Thisss wayyy, pleassse_ ," a voice hissed.

Ahead, a lamp flickered to life above an open doorway, and the Detective staggered to a stop. Her heart drummed against her ribs and into Lucifer's arm. It wasn't often she was frightened—not much frightened a woman who had met God Himself and was knowingly cavorting with the Devil—but her fear, more than anything else, set him on edge.

"Nothing says you _must_ enter," he reminded her.

She stared at it, lips parted, pupils large, but then her jaw set, and he knew what her choice would be. "No. No, I want to see it. This is fun."

_Fun_. Humans had such an odd view of it sometimes.

"Very well," he assented.

The short distance to the room ahead was laid thick with ghoulish traps. A framed picture came to life with a woman's scream, and another field hand dashed through the hall, laughing as his fingers dripped blood onto the creaking hardwood. Somewhere, a man cried, and a young woman tittered.

Past the threshold of the lamplit doorway waited a humble sewing room. Faded bolts of fabric stacked into a half-pyramid provided color to the otherwise dull space with its cracked, yellowed walls and rugless, worn floors. An antique Singer sewing machine, a spinning wheel, and multiple baskets used for sorting stood covered in the dust of disuse.

Lucifer frowned at the spinning wheel. "Bit anachronistic, really."

The Detective turned in place in the center of the room. "This room's quiet."

"Probably can't trust that."

"Probably not." She flashed a grin.

Lucifer studied the spinning wheel, memories of the last spinner he'd ever known filling his head, while the Detective ventured toward the bolts of fabric. She touched and lifted them with careful, trembling fingers.

"These fell out of fashion at the turn of the century," Lucifer commented.

"Which century?"

"Nineteenth, and touché," he said good-naturedly. "I've known many a seamstress and spinner over the ages."

"I bet," the Detective said, her tone wry but not without fondness as she came to stand on the other side of the spinning wheel.

"Yes, well, the last was a woman named Mary Jo. Quite the firecracker, and a suffragette before the term was even coined. You'd have liked her, I imagine." He waggled his brows suggestively. "She'd have especially liked you."

Seeing a long strand of woolen yarn was still wrapped around the bobbin and whorl, Lucifer gave the wheel an experimental spin and watched it twirl in time with the flyer. He smiled at the Detective as the wheel made its third revolution.

"Care to move o—"

The words caught in his throat as a trap door flew opened beneath the Detective's tall leather boots. For the briefest moment, he saw the shock on her face mirroring his own before gravity took hold.

"Detective!" Lucifer scrambled forward, reaching for her, but it was too late, and she disappeared into the black hole, plumed hat flying from her head as she cried his name. He dropped to the floor and looked into the darkness, gasping breaths. "Detective?" he yelled.

There was no reply other than her distant, echoing screams.

"Bloody hell," he murmured, maneuvering to follow her feet-first. But where the hole had opened, a panel of wood slid like a loosed dart, nearly clipping his shoe as it locked seamlessly into place. It was as if no trap door had been there at all. Lucifer slammed an open palm to the panel. He could punch through, but who knew where the pieces might fall? Who knew where _he_ might land if he followed? Crushing the Detective would do him no good.

Snarling, he rose to his feet and strode into the hallway with its many rooms. What was it with bloody hallways and their bloody doors in his life?

Very helpfully, one of the costumed field hands was in the middle of drifting from one room to another with a pitchfork in hand.

"You there!" Lucifer snapped his fingers in irritation.

The dirt-smudged white man glanced at him beneath a mop of dirty blond hair before moving on. Lucifer followed like a bloodhound and caught the actor just in time, as his hand hovered above a cleverly hidden button on the wall. Some other time, Lucifer might appreciate the deviousness of the manor's architecture, but for now he grabbed a fistful of tunic and yanked.

The actor's feet cleared the floor, but with a yelp he managed to land on his toes and stumble into stability. Lucifer approached him with narrowed, red eyes, until the man squealed and backed into the nearest corner of the paisley-wallpapered bedroom. He pointed his pitchfork in self-defense. "Y-your eyes... H-how are you doing that?"

"I'm the Devil," Lucifer explained, and glared at the dulled ends of the pitchfork. "And believe me when I say no one knows how to use a pitchfork like I do." The actor whimpered, and the pitchfork wavered. " _Now_ , where did my partner go?"

He could hear her screams, reverberating through the mansion's wooden bones.

"Y-your partner?"

"The Detective." He huffed in frustration and reeled back his aggression. "Hot pirate that makes you go full mast?" The man's eyes lit with recognition. "Yes, lovely, so you do know who I'm talking about. She was in the sewing room with me one minute, and in the next"—he threw his arms wide—"the sarlacc pit."

"Uh, d-did you spin the spinning wheel?"

"Well." Lucifer grimaced. "I don't see how that matters."

"Wow, no one's ever actually been standing in the right place for that feature to work."

"So where the hell is she?"

"I-I can't say." The man licked his lips. At Lucifer's vicious glare, he dropped his pitchfork. It clattered to the floor as he held his hands up in surrender. "I'm real sorry, bro. It's show secrets."

" _Show secrets_." Snatching hold of a besmirched collar, Lucifer's eyes flashed red once more. "Do I look like I give a toss about show secrets?"

The actor squeaked, the whites of his eyes bright as he wagged his head left and right. "Sh-she'll be in the basement. T-there's a-a net and slide that takes you down."

"Take me to her." When the man hesitated, Lucifer shoved him toward the door. "Come on! Chop-chop."

The disheveled actor led him through a secret door buried in the back of a closet that was filled with musty suits and jackets. Beyond it lay Westing Manor's big secret: a well-lit, narrow, wooden hallway lined with sliding doors and capped at either end by skinny stairwells. It was not unlike the crossover of a theater stage, whereby actors might covertly pass in and out of rooms or onto different levels.

As they entered the space, one of the hissing women in black gawked beneath her blue-black costume makeup. "He can't come back here, Daniel!"

" _Daniel_? Oh, well that explains everything." Really, Daniels were second only to Keiths at this point.

"I had to," Daniel said, shuffling sideways to squeeze past the woman in black.

"You _had_ to?" she repeated.

"He truly did," Lucifer answered, sucking in to avoid contact with the woman's rather extraordinary décolletage. There really was a first time for everything in life.

He followed Daniel down a claustrophobic flight of stairs. With each step, the Detective's hoarse cries and pleas tore at him.

"What sort of blasted torture is this?" Lucifer demanded, pressing against his guide's back in his haste to descend.

"You guys signed a waiver!"

"I'll show you bloody waivers," he grumbled, and pushed Bucolic Daniel to the side. With some effort in the tight space, he fumbled past the other man and jogged downward.

"It's the door at the bottom!" Daniel called after him, stating what was patently obvious.

Lucifer's heart pounded as he neared the plain, wooden door. He jumped the final several steps, landing neatly, wings shivering beneath his flesh. Grabbing the doorknob, he turned it without thought.

The door pulled toward him as he opened it, letting through a mind-numbing soundtrack of hissing serpents. The basement room was a hole of darkness, the space so deep that even with the light of the hidden corridor streaming in, he couldn't spot the Detective. Rubber snakes of every color and size spilled onto his polished leather shoes and continued to come until his red-suited shins were buried.

"What in Dad's name…" he murmured, and then frowned. Oh. She loathed snakes. "Detective!"

"Lucifer? _Lucifer_!"

"I'm here!" He waded into the dark room, through the undulating heap of rubber. "They're not real, Detective! They're like the felt bats!"

If she heard him, she didn't reply. Fear, much as he hated to admit it, was like desire. There was little hope of containing the flood of emotion once the levee broke. No unseeing a ghost, no taking back a kiss or unsigning a contract. As Linda had once taught him, there was no going back. There was only going through.

"I hate snakes," the Detective whimpered, and it became a mantra amid the omnipresent hissing. "I hate them. I hate them." Her panicked squirming caused a chain reaction of rubber wriggling. "Get them off me!"

He fished about in the dark, latching onto one of her hands when he located it. She yelled and struggled.

"It's only me, Detective!" Lucifer shouted, holding tight to her fingers. Ignoring the jellied jiggle around his legs, he grabbed her wrist, and then both her forearms, and drew her to himself. He sighed in relief when her body was pressed close.

The Detective clung to his neck. "Please get me out of here."

Lucifer glanced at the rectangular block of light streaming in from the stairwell and made a rash decision. With a roll of his shoulders, he unfurled his wings. His feathers bent and twisted awkwardly around the snakes, but soft, divine light chased away the worst of the darkness. He held the Detective's head close to his breast.

"This is going to feel weird," he warned, and tugged on the ripcord of time and space.

A second passed, at least by human standards, and he landed them in Westing Manor's corn-fenced backyard. It was dark and quiet, except for the occasional shriek from inside the mansion. Sheathing his wings, he set the Detective down and struggled not to laugh at her vacant, open-mouthed expression as he held her steady by her arms. Dad didn't exactly intend His children to fly around humans, and dimension-bending travel was especially ill-advised. There just seemed to be a bit of lag between body and soul whenever you did it.

He knew she had returned to herself when her eyes rolled into focus and she shook her head like a dog come from water. "What the hell?" She looked at her feet uncertainly before relaxing.

"Welcome back, Captain." Lucifer grinned, delighted, and then pouted. He slid fingers down the braid hanging over her shoulder. "We seem to have lost your hat." Not that he minded the wispy flyaways framing her face.

"It wasn't anything special." The Detective put a hand on her head and looked around in a daze. "Did we just...teleport?"

"That's likely the closest word for it in your language."

"Okay, I guess...that's a thing." She was quiet for several moments while she stared at the manor. When a particularly loud scream from inside the mansion reached their ears, she gave a shudder. "You saved me in there."

He scoffed. "Darling, I've saved you from much worse."

"True. I know. But I _really_ hate snakes."

"I'd no idea your fear of them was so strong."

Then again, all humans—all creatures not from Hell, really—were like this. They had deep fears they contained only by dint of avoiding exposure.

Reaching up, the Detective cradled his jaw with gentle fingers and studied him in that way he found infinitely wondrous. No one had ever looked at him the way she did, and he was certain he could bask in it forever, if given the chance. She stared at his mouth, and when she stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him, he accepted her with a glad heart. His hands fell to her hips, and lower still, as she pressed closer and swept her tongue along his. When they parted several moments later, they stared at one another and breathed raggedly.

Her gaze lifted to the horns on his head.

"Like what you see?" he teased softly.

"You're so smug," she said, but didn't deny it.

Lucifer watched in fascination as a war between raw desire and urbane propriety played out on her face. It was a close thing, perhaps, and he laughed in surprise when she grasped one of his hands and began pulling him with her toward the field of corn.

"Well, yo ho ho, Captain," Lucifer chuckled, allowing himself to be led. "Are you wanting to walk my plank?"

Looking over her shoulder, she smirked as she rolled her eyes and tugged harder at his hand.

They slipped between dark green rows of corn, walking deeper and deeper into the field beneath the light of a slender moon. Long stalks leaned and lurched as their leafy arms and silken ears brushed against the intruders of their solitude. Lucifer watched the Detective's long legs in her tight breeches and tall boots, the enticing sway of her hips, but an infuriating pinch of doubt began to set in. Chloe Decker was far wilder in the sack than he could have ever imagined or hoped for, but this was new, and she'd had a fright, and he didn't want her to have regrets.

"Um, Captain— _Detective_? Far be it from me to discourage you from buttering my corn, but—"

She turned suddenly, and he nearly ran into her. "Shut up and let me thank you for rescuing me," she laughed, pulling her peasant top free from her trousers. Reaching up, she slipped it off her torso, kicking up more wispy hairs. Lucifer swallowed when she unhooked the cream-colored lace bra encircling her ribs and let it slide down her arms to the ground. The moon loved her breasts almost as much as he did. 

"Well, then."

Through fits of giggles, they undressed each other and laid out his suit jacket and the rest of their clothes between two thickly-leaved rows of corn. Lucifer sat on the thinly-covered ground, and the Detective straddled him, her naked thighs against his.

He looked upon her, his mouth dry and the rest of him full of want.

"You look so silly in these," she whispered, even as she wrapped fingers around the horns. Red glitter fluttered down before his vision. "But I like you with them." She grinned. "And I like you without them, too."

Lucifer held back a laugh. " _Shucks_."

Groaning, the Detective covered his mouth with hers, perhaps only to shut him up. He fell back to the earth, bringing her with him, and as they touched and played and joined together, Lucifer thought there was, at long last, no fear left between them. It was a given that she loved him, and he her.

Later, he sighed happily into her tousled hair. The broken remains of the cheap headband were scattered on either side of his head, and both their faces were covered in glitter. He was definitely getting something custom made for next time. A devilish Christmas surprise, maybe, assuming he could hold out that long.

"You've left me a husk of a man, Detective."

" _No_." She breathed laughter onto his throat from where she was draped atop him like a tired starfish. "No more corn puns."

"No?" He snickered. "What of general farming metaphors? Because I have to say, I've plowed many a field, Detective, but yours is my favorite."

He laughed when she snorted swinishly. "Thanks. I think."

"Oh, the pleasure's mine."

They lay quiet and content for several minutes, the stars bright above them, the night air cool on their slick skin. When the Detective spoke once more, it was with some reluctance. "We should catch up with Ella." A pause. "And Michael. They're probably through the manor now, or almost."

Lucifer grunted. He'd much rather have round two.

"And," she continued, "we probably need to make sure none of the actors are worried because we, you know, disappeared."

"What's All Hallows' Eve without a little mischief?" He shrugged a shoulder. "Anyway, no one's come looking for us." 

Humans explained away all manner of things, and always would until forced to face another reality. He and the Detective knew that better than most.

Quiet descended upon them again, and he felt the moment she drifted to sleep. They could stay here a little longer, he thought, closing his eyes. He couldn't have been resting for more than a few minutes when a loud crash sounded from the direction of the manor. He snapped to attention and rose to an elbow when a familiar _swoop, swoop_ of wings drew his gaze skyward. And there was his twat of a brother, the berobed plague doctor, flying through the air.

Lucifer barked a laugh, and the Detective stirred against him. "Hmm?"

"My brother's just flown the coop, Detective. No doubt is giving many a trick-or-treater a night to remember."

"He's what?"

"He just flew over us. Seemed in quite the hurry."

Her head popped up. "Seriously? Ella's probably losing her mind."

"Yes, he should have told her when he had the chance."

They dressed sloppily and jogged out of the fields at the same time Miss Lopez was bursting from one of Westing Manor's back doors and onto its wrap-around porch. On the second story, a large window was left open wide. A slack-jawed woman in white stared out of it blankly.

"Did you guys see?" Miss Lopez shouted, running to meet them in her tiger onesie. "Michael has wings!" She stretched her arms wide. "Like, condor big. Or albatross. That's the bigger one, right? Like, like—" Her eyes grew large and she bent in half with her shock. "Whoa, _wow_ , he's totally an angel, isn't he?"

"I mean..." The Detective cringed. "Apparently."

"Dude." Miss Lopez nodded several times as she gasped for air. " _Dude_. I kissed an angel. And there was _tongue_. A whole lot of it."

"You _what_?" Lucifer snapped. "Oh, this truly is a frightful night."

"I don't know, big guy," Miss Lopez said, her words bunched together by speed. "He was scared. I was scared. There was a closet. And he's—he's, like, not even a boy. Or a man. Or whatever." Tears rushed to her eyes. " _Oh._ Oh, way to go, Ella. You sure do know how to pick them, don't you?"

"Oh, Ella." The Detective rushed to put an arm around striped shoulders. "You didn't know. It's okay."

"But if Michael's—" Miss Lopez stopped and pointed a finger at Lucifer. "That means you—you're—"

"You can say it," Lucifer encouraged, stuffing hands into his pockets and leaning forward excitedly. The Detective narrowed her eyes at him. " _Go on._ "

"You're not a method actor."

He blinked and straightened, disappointed. "Well, no. I'm not."

"I met your Dad!" she suddenly yelled. " _Ave María Purísima_!"

"Okay," the Detective said firmly, cutting off the quip Lucifer had readied, "let's...hope the staff here are okay after tonight and just leave. Maybe go get some coffee, talk things over?" Arm still hooked around Miss Lopez, the Detective began walking them along the side of the manor, toward where the cars remained parked.

Lucifer followed close behind, listening to Miss Lopez stumble over questions that became increasingly scientific. Questions about angelic biology and Heaven and Hell and everything in-between, and it was then he knew she'd be all right. More that all right. Hell, she was taking it better than anyone else had, thus far. Wonder why.

"Wait. If angels have wings, does that mean— Does he have horns?" she asked, and twisting her head around again, "D-do you have horns?" 

His grin was all teeth as he dusted red glitter off his shoulder. "Not precisely, Miss Lopez," the Devil answered, eyes set on a blushing pirate. "But when they're desired, I aim to please."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun little aside: Westing Manor is (very) loosely based on [_Sleep No More_](https://mckittrickhotel.com/about/), an immersive theater project in New York City. I've not been, but friends have, and I'm desperate to go.
> 
> * * *
> 
> [Fic Recs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchstick_dolly/bookmarks) • [My Fics, Categorized](https://matchstickdolly.tumblr.com/lucifer-fanfics-by-matchstickdolly) • [My Fanvids on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpFt_dvJXpicQkuPOCDEvhg/videos) • [Tumblr](https://matchstickdolly.tumblr.com/)


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